Kenyan military plane crashes in Somalia, rebels say shot down

The Kenyan military have said that the crash was due to technical problems. PHOTO: AZ Central

However, Somali rebels said they had shot it down with a missile.

The aircraft, which had been on a combat mission, came down in the area of the southern port city of Kismayu, where Kenyan troops are deployed as part of an African Union peacekeeping force battling the Islamist rebel group al Shabaab.

A spokesman for the Kenya Defence Force (KDF) said the pilot reported a technical problem on returning from a combat mission at about 3 pm (1200 GMT) before he was forced to eject.

Al Shabaab said they had shot the plane down, however.

“We hit the Kenyan jet and downed it. It was bombing Bulaguduud town today,” the rebels' spokesman for military operations, Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, told Reuters. He said the group used a missile and that the pilot was “burnt inside”.

The report follows two attacks in two weeks by al Shabaab militants inside Kenya’s northern border region in which more than 60 non-Muslim Kenyan civilians were killed.

Last year, a suspected US reconnaissance drone crashed in southern Somalia. A regional governor at the time said rebels had shot it down but the rebels only confirmed the crash without saying they were responsible for it.

The United States does not report about any such activities in Somalia.